The great town-hall debacle: How democracy isn’t supposed to work
Have you heard? People are angry. All over the country they are rising to their feet, standing and shouting out at their elected officials, letting their irate voices be heard. They have had enough, they are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it any more. What is the problem, exactly? The guy who won the last presidential election by some 10 million votes has had the nerve to try and carry out the policies he promised he would. The nerve.
So, is all this fulminating, this ranting and raving, just a case of sour grapes? There’s little doubt that the majority of the protesters captured by cable tv cameras chose John McCain over Barack Obama, if they voted at all. Their behavior is eerily reminiscent of the antics captured in the parking lots of Sarah Palin rallies, or the snarling shout-outs heard when McCain himself stood behind the microphone. Obama is this, Obama is that. The great taunting of ‘08 has carried right on into ‘09, hitting a crescendo on the unlikely subject of whether or not to reform healthcare. Whether the persistent yelling out of misinformation (no, there are no “death panels” hidden in the legislation), or the comparisons to Adolf Hitler will ultimately have any effect on whether or not America will get the healthcare it deserves (a debatable point, to be sure) remains to be seen. Maybe the mob will scare America into continuing with the status quo, or perhaps Obama needs this wayward bunch of protesters more than they realize. One thing that is clear, however: this is not really the way democracy—and town hall meetings, in particular—are supposed to work.
As envisioned by our founding fathers, our system of government, with its heralded checks and balances, its safeguards against the tyranny of majorities, its perpetual electoral cycles, was never meant to be held hostage by an angry mob. The primal scream therapy on display at town hall meetings is giving the hall, and the town it is located in, a very bad reputation. Sound argumentation has been trumped by who can sound off the loudest. An appreciation for subtlety and compromise has been outdone by the juvenile application of a Hitler moustache and a swastika upon the image of one’s enemy.
Watching the melee, the open mic free-for-all, get-it-off-your-chest, channel Glenn Beck throw-downs, you have to wonder how long politicians will subject themselves to this nonsense. Some have already decided to try and shove the town hall into that electronic box on the desktop, lest they have to physically separate two irate constituents. Smart move. Jerry Springer once contemplated making the leap from fist-fight talk-show TV to politics, which, at the time, seemed laughable. But who is laughing now? It is democracy itself that has made the downward leap.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
Good piece David, this entire thing has gone way past the issue of health care and something very ugly is brewing here. Yesterday on MSNBC I saw what’s his name (glasses, lots of hair, fuzzy beard) from the Southern Poverty Law Center being interviewed, as he said a perfect storm has developed for the hate groups, a shifting demographic, a black president, a Jewish chief of staff, a latina on the high court. In desperation the GOP has latched on to this and exploiting it as in every way possible. We are in for some ugly times. I know there are many people who want to dismiss the idea racism is behind this, but look at what the enraged people are saying, things like “this is not my America”. The black woman in your video had a picture of Rosa Parks yanked out of her hands.
Brian,
Are you saying that those who have expressed serious reservations about further expansion of government into the health-care industry are racist? The actions of a few wound-up nutcases should not be used to diminish the importance or validity of the concerns of a significant percentage of the American public. It could be “this entire thing” demonstrates that many rational folks don’t want to start down the road toward a single-payer system. Recent polling data would seem to lend credence to this idea.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] heated have the nation’s town-hall meetings become? Here’s some video — taken Tuesday in Missouri at Sen. Claire McCaskill’s [...]
Brian,
Certainly there’s racism bound up in all this, as well as a simple desire to defeat anything that Obama suggests.
David I’m very hard pressed to think of anything other than racism that could be driving such extreme passions.
While i certainly don’t disagree that there is a component of racism in the pitiable souls we see mucking up the ‘town-hall’ meetings, there is a bit more to it than that easy, quick explanation.
When i hear the impoverished lady from Arkansas screaming that she wants ‘her’ America back, i think she’s talking about the America that doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of jobs slashed a month, whole families retirement funds evaporated, whole neighborhoods of homes forclosing, never ending wars based on lies, All [Poor] children Left Behind. I could go on but you may get the point by now; you would have to have lived through the Depression of ‘29 to know worse times.
To empathise with her dilemma one has only to spend some time studying the bottom rungs of society (not hard – it’s the majority) and one gets a picture of a people that are in the process of quite literally breaking psychologically. They don’t trust Half of the media or Gov’t (if at all) and unfortunately a lot of them have been brainwashed to trust the very people who feed them pure horseshit, (glen BLECH, Limbaugh, et al).
We Cannot Blame these lost people. It is the Broken Corrupt Government and Broken system of mass media that has betrayed and created these circumstances in the first place. If you want to point a finger, look at the source not the symptom.
In response to another comment. See in context »That’s not what I see when I saw that woman.
In response to another comment. See in context »Let he who is without prejudice cast the first epithet
In response to another comment. See in context »pretty defensive response there andy.
In response to another comment. See in context »So what’s the problem here exactly, that people are irate, or that they disagree with the policy being proposed? Perhaps they’re reacting against the “tyranny of the majority.” These town hall charades have nothing to do with debate. They’re just a forum for politicians to create the illusion of support for their programs. Apparently the Democrats just aren’t as good as the Bushies at screening their audiences. This is a good illustration of why democracy doesn’t work. It’s all about the majority imposing its will on the minority.
David,
First, Jerry Springer started out as a politician, then got disgraced, and made his career as a talk show host. He was actually a big shot in Illinois, and considered for governor.
Brian,
Have you heard of ideology? There are plenty of hard conservatives I know who have been this pissed off whenever any liberal tries to do anything, regardless of color, religion, whatever. There is something very visceral about some people’s reaction to potential actions that would go against their beliefs.
[...] Read full story here [...]